


Motionless

by FictionPenned



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode: s03e08 Are You Leading or Am I?, F/F, Post-Episode: s03e08 Are You Leading or Am I?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: It isn’t that she is physically paralyzed, rather, she can no longer seem to remember how one goes from thinking about carrying out an action to actually following through on that same action. There is a fundamental disconnect in the brain, a part of her mind that is screaming so loudly about grief and parting and longing that it drowns out all other signals.She is stuck in a trap so perfectly designed that even when she has been offered a way out, she cannot bring herself to take it.It is a trap that looks like the cover of Vogue and smells like power.It is a trap that exists somewhere behind her, on the other side of the bridge on which they both stand.Written for Fic In A Box 2020.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Motionless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguelightning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguelightning/gifts).



Walking has never been so difficult.

Eve usually considers herself to be rather good at walking, all things considered. She can walk and chew gum at the same time, she clocked about 8,000 steps a day during the two weeks in January when she had actually worn her Fitbit, she can fight through the pain and climb stairs in heels, however, in the face of taking the single, final step that would carry her off of this bridge, she finds herself completely and utterly incapable of moving.

It isn’t that she is physically paralyzed, rather, she can no longer seem to remember how one goes from _thinking_ about carrying out an action to _actually_ following through on that same action. There is a fundamental disconnect in the brain, a part of her mind that is screaming so loudly about grief and parting and _longing_ that it drowns out all other signals.

She is stuck in a trap so perfectly designed that even when she has been offered a way out, she cannot bring herself to take it.

It is a trap that looks like the cover of _Vogue_ and smells like power.

It is a trap that exists somewhere behind her, on the other side of the bridge on which they both stand.

“ _Don’t turn. Just walk_ ,” Villanelle had said.

Eve cannot help but wonder if Villanelle turned, if Villanelle is looking at her now, if walking is just as difficult for Villanelle as it is for her. On the surface it feels like a silly thought — Villanelle is a trained assassin, after all. She has committed countless murders, has capitalized on that violence, has turned the cold-hearted tasks into theater and laughter and taunting. Surely, someone with Villanelle’s history would be capable of a task as seemingly superficial as stepping off a bridge without looking back, yet Eve finds herself caught up in the memory of Villanelle’s more vulnerable moments. The confusion, the fear of rejection, the intimate conversations, and the very real sense of loss and insatiable _longing_ that seeps from her every pore all paint the picture of someone dragged along in a raging current that never stopped, crying out for help along the way.

Villanelle is the most complicated, most fascinating, most intoxicating person that Eve has ever known. It is repulsive and alluring in equal measure, a dichotomy that should not exist but persists anyway. She is a dangerous woman to know and a dangerous woman to love, and despite all her protestations, all her anger, all her well-founded fear, Eve cannot picture moving on from this. She has already tried and failed, after all. She lived out of her little apartment, she went to physical therapy, she got a normal job for normal people with normal risks, and she practically drowned in the dull sameness of it. For all those months, the only times she felt alive was when she drifted back to old habits, started her mind back on puzzles, began to go deeper into unraveling the many mysteries that surround Villanelle and her employers.

One step off this bridge, and she will be free of the life or death pressures of that world, but in taking that step, she is also separating herself from the very things that have made her life feel bigger and deeper and more meaningful than it had before.

She very much wants to see Villanelle again.

Preferably not in the context of guns or stabbings or gruesome murders, but if that comes with the territory, Even is pretty sure that she is willing to handle it.

So she takes a deep, shaking breath, she turns, and she looks.

Villanelle has also stopped walking, and after a moment, she turns, too.

Even across the considerable meters between them, Eve can see tears gathering in the corners of Villanelle’s eyes, molding and reflecting the neon lights of the city. On instinct, Eve reaches up a hand and touches her own face. There is wetness on her cheeks, evidence of sadness that she was barely aware of shedding.

For a long time, the women stare at the other, both of them either unwilling or unable to be the first to close the distance, the first to break down, the first to admit failure. But a smile — enigmatic and sad and faintly amused — tightens Villanelle’s lips. 

Eve meets the smile with an uproarious laugh of her own — a howling, shaking, desperate kind of laugh.

All of this is _ridiculous_.

How did she — former MI5 desk worker and technically still married Eve Polastri — find herself in a situation where she must decide whether falling further into a mutual infatuation with a glamorous serial killer is worth it?

She lived it, she knows the entire road here, she walked it herself, and yet, in this moment, it seems giddily incomprehensible.

Villanelle is looking at her in mildly disgusted confusion, an expression that has become increasingly familiar to Eve during her parlance. It is an expression of uncertainty, of not knowing, of unsettled curiosity, and it spurs Eve to break that tension and take the first few steps forward, closing the distance between them as she soaks up her lingering tears with the cuff of her jacket.

“I’m sorry, it’s just —“ She loses control of both the thought and the associated words, temporarily burying them beneath a sudden fit of full-bellied laughter. “I think I forgot how to walk.”

Villanelle blinks once.

It takes a moment for her to comprehend the situation, to take in the laughter and the walking and the aborted parting and place her emotions in the context of Eve’s own, but eventually, the confused smile spreads into something deeper, a smug, delighted, near-feline grin of understanding.

“I said it would be easier. I didn’t say it would be easy.”

There is a step forward, a joining of hands, a sudden reduction of the air between them to scant molecules and the complex semantics of height.

It is like falling into step on the dance floor again — intimate, carnal, gravitational in its pull.

Cars streak by, but Eve and Villanelle have care for neither the vehicles nor their occupants. They only have eyes for each other.

“So what do we do now?” Eve asks, staring up into Villanelle’s eyes, hand still grasping the assassin’s own.

Villanelle frowns, a small furrow forming in the center of her forehead. “How am I supposed to know? What do normal people do? Drinks? Coffee? Work?”

There is a pause as Eve considers the options, running her tongue over her lips even as she turns the list over in her mind. “Coffee sounds great. Boozy ice cream sounds better.”

“Do you know a place?”

“The supermarket?” Eve proposes, raising an eyebrow.

Villanelle nods and turns, falling into place at Eve’s side, her right hand still grasping Eve’s left.

“Take me there, Eve.”

A smile winds its way across Eve’s lips and tightens its grip on her heart, and together, the pair finally succeeds in taking that last, painful step off of the bridge and onto solid ground.


End file.
